


A Shadow Mist-Haunting

by potatoesanddreams



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Maglor is fading, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:09:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21882784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potatoesanddreams/pseuds/potatoesanddreams
Summary: Maglor still sings.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28





	A Shadow Mist-Haunting

He did not know how long it had been, since his mourning had begun; but he had grown very thin in the world. Often now when he held out his burnt hand to the cool mists it seemed to melt into them, so that his wrist ended in a silver haze, and the aching of the burn was the only solid thing remaining. That was not foremost a thing of the body, and so it did not fade. But as for the rest of him – his tears were mist condensed; his harp was the howling of the wind across the sea; he left no footprints in the gray sand. Only his voice had grown truer as the years slipped on, and now the throat that had constrained as well as shaped it was merely a pale shadow beneath the curtain of a darker one; it hindered him no more. His grief was liquid, collecting in the mirrored tide-pools when the sea was at its ebb, thrown skyward amid the wave-foam when the waters rolled high and wild up the beach once more – shattering to droplets, joining with the mist. I am sorry! he sang, and in strands of mist the wind caught up his voice and carried it down the shore, so that the sea-birds hearing it cried anxious echoes.

He never dared to sing, Forgive me; or, I have paid.

**Author's Note:**

> I happened upon [this post](https://songoftreachery.tumblr.com/post/66602029587/shall-we-mourn-here-deedless-forever-a) by chance the other day, and in addition to making me terribly sad it also reminded me that I've never read a fic in which Maglor fades, as Tolkien wrote somewhere that elves who lingered in Middle-earth would eventually do. This isn't my headcanon of Maglor's eventual fate - mostly because I couldn't possibly handle the sadness of that - but I was nonetheless having Feelings about the concept, and they lent themselves to writing.


End file.
